


Weirdos Who Care

by LongLiveZorp (ravenclaw_scar)



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-20 09:46:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14258286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenclaw_scar/pseuds/LongLiveZorp
Summary: A Ben and Leslie chapter for every episode from 2x23 - 7x13“These people are weirdos. But they're weirdos who care.”Inspired by Glennjaminhow's 'Missing Moments.' I definitely recommend reading it!





	1. The Master Plan

_She thought they’d see eye to eye after drinking beer at 10 am on a workday. She thought he’d be out of her hair in a few days; she’d even done his job for him with the new parks department budget._  
_She didn’t know what she’d do without the government._

Ben’s desk was hidden from view as Leslie stood at the open doorway. She glanced around the doorframe, noting the absence of his persistently cheerful co-worker from the desk that seemed to be covered mostly in vitamin bottles and less so in important papers.

The same couldn’t be said for Ben’s when she rounded the corner and knocked softly on the open door. He didn’t seem to register the sound for a second, his pen tapping its own consistent beat on the table, head resting on one hand and eyes fixed on an array of colour coded spreadsheets. Eventually, he looked up, failing to hide his reluctance to invite her in.

“Ms. Knope,” he greeted stiffly, the loose tongued, slightly awkward Ben from that morning at the bar hidden by a neatly ironed shirt and meticulously knotted tie. Leslie stepped into the room and pulled a chair up to the other side of his desk, glancing across the documents in front of her surreptitiously before smiling sheepishly in his direction.

“It’s 6 o’clock,” she replied as if the time meant something to the two of them. Ben frowned to himself and gestured questioningly. “Technically, we finish work at 5:30 so you may as well call me Leslie.”

“Right,” he drew out the syllable as if he was still uncertain. Leslie noticed a more nervous disposition than she had previously observed, almost feeling sorry for the four times she had now voiced her harsh opinions of him. Almost.

“So, Benji Wyatt,” she continued persistently, her unnecessarily competitive streak cheering as he smiled reluctantly, “What are you doing?” Ben had started to shuffle his papers together, not failing to notice Leslie’s wandering eyes but tapped the heading of one of the sheets for her to read.

“Libraries,” he explained tiredly, “I’m just trying to balance a couple of changes to avoid cutting some of the new schemes.”

“You could just scrap the department, I suppose,” Leslie replied, without a hint of malice that might suggest she was still holding a grudge against him. Ben raised his eyebrows amusedly and shook his head to himself.

“I can’t figure you out,” he admitted, pointing the tip of his pen in her direction, “One minute you’re presenting a detailed report of the many skills every member of your department has and the next, you want to remove an entire sector of the government.” Leslie shrugged, sneering slightly at the library documents.

“Well, we all know that parks are more important than borrowing books.” Ben laughed lowly to himself and Leslie noticed that his eyes never quite met her’s and that his hand still tapped his pen on the plastic table.

“I’m not sure I’ve figured you out either,” she broke the silence again, “I seem to keep calling you a jerk but you don’t seem to care all that much.” Another soft frown furrowed Ben’s brow and he eventually glanced up, his hazel eyes meeting her blue.

“I’m used to it.”

Leslie felt the same pang of guilt, really stabbing at her gut this time. She thought back to the crumpled list she’d found in her pocket that morning; ‘reasons why that jerk is a jerk,’ courtesy of the haze of intoxication. Or rather, the thick fog that had descended on her brain, leaving the writing disjointed and sloping in a drunken walk down the page.

“I am sorry,” she murmured thoughtfully, intending to hold his eyes in her gaze in earnest, but finding them trailing the table once more, “I must have made a terrible first impression.” Ben shook his head kindly, a fleeting smile crossing his quirked mouth for a moment.

“Don’t worry about it. At least it took alcohol to get to the ‘no one wants you here’ stage. I usually get that from stone cold sober people.” Ben’s mouth turned up at the corners once more in a sad lament to the past and shrugged his shoulders, face closing off and the usual calm of professionalism building up the walls behind his irises.

“I should get going,” he continued more firmly. Leslie stood up from her chair and contemplated trying her luck a little, never one to shy away from a challenge.

“Any chance you’d reconsider the government shutdown?”

“You know as well as I do that I can’t,” Ben replied with a shake of his head, “We’ll get it up and running as soon as possible.” Leslie didn’t stop the huff of frustration leaving her mouth in a disappointed exhalation and found her mind returning to the department; her friends.

“It won’t be the same,” she complained stiffly like a child protesting a missed visit to the park playground, “You can’t cut half of a government and act so casually about it!” Ben shook his head, more to himself again, and glanced up at her.

“I’ve said it before, but…” he trailed off for a moment and sighed to himself, “Chris and I are not to blame for this situation. Your money has been handled terribly for several years. That’s the only reason why we’re here.” He still sounded patient but, like the freedom of alcohol on her tongue, Leslie’s threatened department put her back on the defensive.

“Well, we’re back to square one.” She crossed the room and paused at the door, catching a muttered comment from Ben at the desk. “What?”

“I said, it isn’t an ideal situation,” his voice rose softly, “I don’t like being the one to tear the image of a freshly painted carousel away from everyone but we have to be realistic. And Chris wasn’t being realistic when he spoke to you yesterday.” He referenced the pep talk his optimistic partner had given the day before with the frustration of a man who had destroyed many a metaphor that his friend had supplied concerned government workers.

“Well, I hope you leave us with something,” Leslie conceded coolly from the doorway, “Or -”

“I’m a jerk?” Ben asked with a weary, half humorous laugh, “I’ve heard worse, Leslie. This situation isn’t new, and every town we come to is the same.” Leslie shook her head impatiently, bristling at the idea that Pawnee could be compared to anywhere, especially in such a bad light.

“Pawnee is special,” she said firmly, repeating a mantra she had often resorted to with close minded individuals such as Ben. She resisted the urge to return to her office and pick out one of the many binders she kept there for such occasions. But glancing at his tired, slightly rumpled appearance, she decided that Ben could be spared the lecture for a night.

“I could supply you with a thousand reasons on the spot,” she continued in compensation, “And if I had time to prepare, my presentation would be thorough and air tight.” Ben nodded along, suppressing a yawn and retrieving his briefcase from the side of his chair. He guided Leslie out of the room, shutting the office door behind them and exhaling exhaustedly.

“I suppose I’ll see you around,” he mumbled awkwardly as they stood outside the door together in silence. Leslie nodded with a poorly masked frown plastered across her face.

She watched him set off down the corridor, shoulders hunched over tiredly and found herself feeling sorry for him. Leslie worked in the outdoors, watching young children take advantage of new playground equipment she had funded, seeing the leaves change colour across the seasons. But what did Ben have? Numbers and spreadsheets – percentages that never quite allowed for everything, names that were never put to faces of employees that had to be let go.

But as she stifled a yawn herself, she shook away the doubt. Ben was a jerk, she shouldn’t feel sorry for him, right? Because he was a threat to her friends’ jobs and to her own job. And if she could forget the weary look on his face and the admission that he was disliked universally wherever he went, Leslie could probably kid herself into hating the frustratingly polite man who disappeared around the corner of the silent hallway. Probably. 


	2. Freddy Spaghetti

The cold metal of the rusted bench had long since warmed against Leslie’s body before she finally stood up and surveyed the now filled pit with an unfamiliar pang of regret. Of course, the pit becoming a flat plot of land certainly put them a step closer to the park of her dreams, but what did it mean for everything else? Would Ann really stick around now that the rubbish tip at the back of her house looked half respectable? Did Mark leave because he felt his job was done?

She rolled the plan proposal up and wedged it under one arm, glancing once towards the soft light glowing through Ann’s curtains with a hunger to talk to her best friend before realising that she wanted to talk _about_ her best friend and perhaps that topic of conversation wouldn’t be received so well. So instead, Leslie Knope turned from the pit and reached her car, driving the all too familiar route to her favourite place.

Standing on the steps to the council building, she watched a light go out several floors above, noticing that only one window remained illuminated by the white, fluorescent light of the cheap bulbs the council used. And, of course, Leslie knew the entire floor plan by heart, especially the location of Ben and Chris’ office due to her frequent visits and numerous meetings with the two of them. She quickly found her own office, just catching sight of the photo frames that lined the windowsill and the blind that was never pulled down so she could work late into the night by the light of the street lamp nearby. Counting along seven windows, she reached the single light and found her mind once more fixated on Ben – confusing, mean, kind Ben.

“Is this what you call celebrating?” Ben looked up from a familiar pile of spreadsheets, covered now in red ink and what Leslie hoped were plans to take down the libraries from the inside, one bit of corruption she wouldn’t hate being a part of. He tilted his head to one side questioningly for a moment, half closed eyes suggesting he wasn’t following her word for word.

“You got hundreds of children their entertainer back today. You did good.” Leslie had pulled up her chair, angling it to avoid the harsh light from the street outside and staring intently at the enigma of a man in front of her.

“I did celebrate,” Ben replied with a hint of sarcasm, “I listened to a grown, adult man sing about pasta for three hours. It was great.” Leslie shook her head in mock disappointment but laughed slightly.

“It really sounds like it was,” she returned with a similar tone, “I especially enjoyed the one where he started to shout random names of pasta over a series of slightly out of tune guitar chords.” Ben’s pen was soon discarded on his desk and he leant forward on his elbows as if keen to continue their conversation.

“Wasn’t that the basis of most of his songs?” he asked with a rare grin, one side of his mouth quirked up to touch the gradual formation of a dimple. Leslie rolled her eyes at him wholeheartedly, beginning to question what made a man so opposed to spaghetti themed music drive to Eagleton and pay said entertainer money from his own pocket.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Sit through the torture of a pasta obsessed kids’ entertainer for several hours?” Ben asked humorously, “Because a woman called Leslie Knope told me to celebrate the fact I wasn’t making a cut for once, but instead providing a service.” He finished with air quotes, but the appreciative smile on his face said otherwise.

“I mean it,” Leslie insisted softly, “Why would you save the concert you tried to shut down?” Ben shrugged truthfully and stood up from his desk, stretching his back and arms. He moved to stand beside the window and glanced out at the sleeping town as it bathed in the white light that reflected across the window pane.

“Every town – every government – grinds to a halt when I arrive,” he began carefully, gesturing to the quiet rooftops below them, “I’m so used to seeing employees leaving the parking lot on the day we close the council down and, most of the time, I’m gone by the time they come back to work.” He turned around to watch Leslie for a moment and seemed to frown to himself behind the shadows cast across his face.

“I see the mechanisms of government broken to pieces and put back together but I never see the finished article. I leave before the new model is tested,” he continued eventually, “Maybe, I suppose, I wanted to be a part of something real, beyond the money and the cuts. I wanted to see people satisfied by their government’s work, not raging and angry, shouting at me like it’s my fault.”

“You know, I blamed you when you first arrived for what had happened. But I’ve realised, you’re here to clean up other people’s messes, not your own,” Leslie assured him under her breath, although stubbornly reluctant to admit she had been wrong. “It’s far from your fault and you proved that today. If anyone from my department did what you did this afternoon, I’d be really proud of them.”

Ben scratched his neck, reddening slightly from the attention and muttering his thanks towards his feet. Leslie joined him in his survey of the quiet streets and sighed happily at the view of her city. Ben found himself watching her far more than the deserted roads, noticing every spark in her eyes, every slight smile as she scanned across the horizon, occasionally pointing out buildings and naming some event she had been part of.

“We still have to make cuts,” Ben continued his reminder that had been cut off earlier as the tuneless sounds of Freddy Spaghetti drowned their conversation at the concert, “But you proved your point today, Leslie. I’m sorry for pointing out how low down the priority ladder your department is.”

“It’s okay,” she replied before rounding on him with a firmness set in the straight line of her mouth, “I can’t forgive you for making a comment like that, but I can let it go; for now.” Ben laughed softly at her fierceness, watching it ebb away into reluctant humour.

“We’ll fix the town, right?” she asked, trying not to betray her desperation as her fingers fiddled with the ‘non-essential personnel’ badge around her neck. Ben’s posture straightened and he ran a hand through his hair to flatten it against his scalp, glancing at the mountain of paper littered with red ink, knowing there were two more piles of folders behind his desk full of problems he still had to solve.

“Of course we will,” he muttered with no real trace of confidence, “That’s my job.”

“And paying off children’s entertainers is in the job description?”

“I do not, in fact, get paid to suffer through endless songs about pasta.” Ben left the window with a final lopsided smile and sat back down at his desk, pen already in hand.

Leslie leant against one of the filing cabinets, both eyes drawn to his hand as it moved across another page of proposed cuts. She smiled wistfully at the image of the man who had stood to one side of a children’s concert, hiding intense boredom behind amused smirks as the colourfully dressed man on stage ran out of Italian sounding words that could be associated with pasta.

“I’ll definitely not see you tomorrow then,” she said finally, “Being non-essential and everything.”

“I didn’t mean -”

“I know,” she replied with a grin, “Don’t work too late.” Ben glanced down at his work and then back at her with softening eyes.

“I won’t,” he promised, but, as Leslie turned to glance back at him from the office door, his head was already resting on one hand, eyes darting across a new page from a stack to his left, the previous sheet joining a considerably smaller pile to his right. There was much more work to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like this episode - getting to see elements of Ben and Leslie's relationship starting to take shape, with the small glances and conversations, as well as Ben finally showing his softer side XD


	3. Go Big Or Go Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her failed attempt to talk to Ben and Chris on Ann's date in the bar, Leslie takes slightly drastic action to get Ben's attention.

Ben was unlocking the door to his motel room, mind still fixed on a new game he had devised on the short drive home. He had been looking through his rear view mirror, trying to deduce the age of the presumably elderly driver behind him who seemed incapable of signalling, wildly unpredictable on the brakes and almost certainly lost. This soon lost its novelty value and he dropped his briefcase at the front door, breathing in the stale motel air and absorbing the sight of his decrepit room.

The Pawnee Motel was reserved for reluctant business workers who didn’t want to face the disappointing drive across the border between Eagleton and Pawnee everyday, poorly paid auditors like Ben and, seemingly, a large proportion of the raccoon population in the town. The beds seemed overused despite the fact that no one in their right mind would book a room in a hotel like that and the thin layer of dust that had since built up on every surface suggested that the staff never really cleaned. This had left Ben to draw the unfortunate conclusion; he would have to make do with the slightly too small, questionably stained towel for some time, despite the fact it no longer dried completely each morning in the constantly low temperatures.

He halfheartedly kicked at the space heater in the corner of the room although it hadn’t worked since its first night when the humming sound grew so loud Ben feared he would somehow short circuit the entire street. The threadbare blankets that were draped at the end of the squashed mattress didn’t exactly offer much in the way of insulation but, with the dim lightbulb already flickering, Ben was drawn to the underwhelming comfort of the thin sheets and quiet darkness of his modest accommodation, a world away from the loud bar he had been dragged to by Chris and his optimistic hopes for some last minute double date involving Leslie that had unsurprisingly ended up in disaster.

It had taken all summer to stabilise the government. Chris and Ben worked tirelessly in the vacant, draughty building, almost growing to miss the constant interruptions of Leslie’s incessant knocking on their door and yet another binder to file somewhere. She, however, stopped coming into work unnecessarily a couple of weeks after the shutdown. Her intentions only became clear earlier that day when she had shown up at the door to a meeting Ben was in, armed with a couple of months worth of work that now lay untouched on the table that rocked on uneven legs in the corner of his room.

This absence hadn’t stopped Ben from thinking about the unpredictable woman from the parks department. It had been a long time since he had spoken to any of the government employees he had worked with in a friendly manner, and far longer since they had returned the favour. That evening before the shutdown was implicated, when Leslie had shown a hint of the compassion she held for the town and for her friends, aimed towards him, had opened Ben’s eyes a little. He had met his match in Leslie Knope; a competitive, ambitious match full of ideas and motivation he had lost a long time ago.

A knock sounded on his door barely a few minutes after he entered the room. The sharp sound startled him in the stark silence of the abandoned motel and he took a second to inhale slowly through his nose and sit on his suddenly clenched hands until the knocking grew in a persistent crescendo once more.

“Leslie,” he hid his surprise behind a look of frustration and leant against either side of the doorway to keep her from pushing her way in. “Do I want to know how you found my address?”

“I followed you home,” she replied matter of factly, her eyes very slightly vacant and the faint but clear smell of alcohol on her breath. Ben took these factors into consideration and almost dragged her across the threshold, placing her in one chair as he manoeuvred the other to sit in front of her. Leaning forward, he raked a hand through his hair and sighed exasperatedly.

“You drove here, whilst drunk, to continue a conversation about parks funding?” Leslie cackled in a slightly concerning way as if she had completed some genius plan of hers and got Ben exactly where she wanted him.

“I’m not drunk,” she denied with a deep roll of her eyes, “You should probably just have lightened up and had a good time at the bar.” Ben raised his own eyebrows at her similar expression and leant back against the unstable wooden backrest, his mind drifting back to the evening and Chris’ disappointment over being set up.

“I was a little busy looking out for my friend,” he retorted slowly before stopping his methodical, anxious hand gestures and glancing back at Leslie, “You didn’t leave Ann at that place just to follow me, did you?” Leslie seemed to think for a moment but eventually shook her head partially convincingly.

“She wanted to be left alone,” she lamented, more to herself than to Ben, “But that’s not important at the moment. What about government funding?” She drew out her words as if they were playing a childish game and Ben bit back an even louder, more frustrated exhalation in favour of a patient nod.

“Chris promised to think things over,” he reasoned sensibly, “Is that not what you were looking for? Minus ruining a date with Ann, I mean.” Leslie frowned grumpily at his final comment, something that filled Ben with the reluctantly satisfying feeling of success. He hadn’t expected the hostility he’d received that morning, walking the long way round to a meeting he was running late for just to satisfy Leslie who got a little like a guard dog when she was feeling defensive. And whilst that evening before the shutdown seemingly meant very little to Leslie, Ben couldn’t help but wistfully crave another like it.

“I did not ruin anything.” Leslie stood up a little unsteadily but her glazed eyes were beginning to focus on the room around her and she seemed to sober up a little, “I don’t appreciate your tone, Benjamin.”

“I don’t appreciate being followed home by someone who was driving so terribly I assumed they must be in their 90s,” Ben replied agitatedly, “HR could have a field day with this.”

“You’d report me to them?” Again, the threat of authority seemed to be a miracle cure for Leslie’s drunkenness and she took a seat on steadier legs and returned to a more civilised tone, “I can go right away. I won’t get in your way - until the morning.” 

“And then you’ll be at my doorstep with coffee and several more proposed projects?” Ben finished with a reluctant smile that Leslie reciprocated with a light blush. He gestured to the pile of folders on the table as evidence and laughed tiredly to himself.

“Come on, at least this is more interesting than the last thirty towns you’ve been dragged to,” Leslie teased softly, casting her gaze around the room, “I mean, you don’t have posters or photos from any of the cities you’ve been living in. Didn’t they give you anything to do besides hacking away with your machete?” Ben followed her gaze, allowing his own to fixate on a small wooden box on the window sill. The window in question looked out on the uninspiring view of the motel parking lot, illuminated all hours of the day by a fluorescent sign that could alternate between advertising rooms and apologising for being full. Somehow, Ben suspected the latter had never been used.

“So you do have some souvenirs,” Leslie observed his slightly narrowed eyes cautiously, “Or are they less happy memories?” Ben shrugged, feeling that evening come back to him – everything, from the window they moved to stand beside to the insistent tone behind Leslie’s words and this foreign feeling to open up to someone who flip flopped between shouting in his face and offering words of praise.

“I’ve told you before; my job doesn’t put me in the best position to make friends,” Ben shrugged off her concern, hiding his darkening eyes in the shadows of the room, “It’s just me and Chris.” Leslie’s hands were close to the box, never quite reaching out all the way but itching with the temptation to remove the lid. Ben reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, moving it between his hands uncertainly for a minute and then placing it on the windowsill in front of them.

“I don’t think there’s much point telling you all of this, seeing as you’re drunk and probably won’t remember it tomorrow,” he began softly, although Leslie’s now alert eyes suggested otherwise as they reflected the neon green sign back towards him.

“I’m not drunk, Ben,” she changed the subject for a moment before returning to it, “Tell me what?”

“It was just after the Ice Town situation and before I got partnered with Chris. In fact, he was a direct consequence of what happened in New Albany because the state government decided I needed to work with someone, rather than budgeting alone. Chris never cut enough to make a significant difference, I was so desperate to impress people that my work became harsh and perhaps a little unfair; we balanced each other out.”

“But what made them partner you up?” Leslie whispered her question hesitantly, her eyes barely glancing in the direction of Ben’s thoughtful, yet strained expression. Her hand continued to move restlessly on the sill, this time moving closer to his own which gripped at the wood nervously.

“In Albany I started to receive letters,” Ben muttered, his hand tapping and covering one of them on the wood in front of them, “They were from a woman from Partridge. She’d graduated from college just before I was elected as mayor. A few months later, unemployment was so bad that even a graduate with a good degree couldn’t get a decent job; or at least not one that could support a single mum with a kid.”

“She had a child?” Leslie watched as Ben nodded before shutting his eyes tightly, leaving wrinkled skin in place of his usually bright brown irises. Her hand moved without hesitation to cover his own, her fingers brushing at the paper beneath his own.

“The dad had left, she had no family to speak of,” Ben sounded as if he were reciting a mantra, or perhaps one of the letters, “The two of them got out, a little like I did, and moved to Indiana. My name came up in conversation with some friends she had in the government. She was working a poorly paid job, balancing a couple of part-time opportunities on the side. I guess she started to get desperate.”

“Why?”

“She threatened me in the letters. She told me to leave the town alone, that she didn’t need another place she called home to be messed up by someone like me again.” Ben sighed shakily and shrugged once more through closed eyes, “I’d only just got away from Partridge, where people mocked me every day and told me to leave my hometown before I ruined it further, and then I was being told to do the same in a completely foreign state.”

“Did she try anything?” Leslie asked, on edge. Ben shook his head and opened his eyes with a sad smile.

“She was a very intelligent chemistry graduate – I imagine I wouldn’t have stood much of a chance if she’d tried to get rid of me for good.” Leslie shuddered involuntarily and hid her frown from view as she turned away. She may have been on the fence about Ben, but he didn’t seem to deserve that level of discomfort.

“So, did you leave?”

“Eventually. The police were reluctant to help me, with the cuts and everything, but I got out and moved on. And Chris came with me,” he pointed again at the letter beneath his hand, “I keep her letter in my pocket most days anyway. I guess it keeps me on track.” Leslie didn’t think this sounded healthy but shrugged off her doubt in favour of a more sympathetic response. Her hand traced the carved patterns on the wooden box for a moment and she looked up questioningly. 

“Save it for another day?” Ben asked quietly, “There’s more in there. I never threw away a single letter anyone sent me. There’s a couple of photos too; happier ones I mean.” Leslie thought of the fact she could probably make several scrapbooks detailing Ben’s experience of Pawnee thus far and wondered if he wouldn’t prefer a positive memento of his time there before realising that he may not have been enjoying it.

“You know, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty when we talk about this stuff,” Ben said, as if he’d read her mind, “I just haven’t found anyone to talk to except for Chris and he can be…”

“Insufferably positive?” Leslie asked with a mild smirk. Ben laughed and nodded.

“Just a little.”

“I think you’d enjoy it here if you let yourself,” she told him honestly, “I’m going to come up with another project idea, something bold and risky, you’re going to give it the all clear and then I’ll make you help out with it.” He laughed again, the sound filling the small room warmly and smiled over at her expectantly.

“Submit an idea and I’ll see,” he replied carefully, “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll help out if I can.” Leslie beamed back at him, removing her hand from his own after folding his fingers around the letter tightly.

“See, you don’t need to dwell on the past anymore. You’ve got Freddy Spaghetti and whatever comes after that now. Pawnee doesn’t hate you.” Ben still found himself smiling at the mention of the pasta fanatic, the remnants of that day banishing the letters from his head for a moment and forcing his fingers to tuck the scrap of paper back into his pocket without a second glance.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he glanced at Leslie and watched her mind at work, “Impress me, Knope.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always wondered what Ben was talking about exactly when he said he got death threats from people when he worked alone. That is where this idea comes from and I guess I’ll just let it play out across later chapters. I really want to get to the point where they’re dating though :)


	4. Flu Season

“You look awful.” Leslie’s voice prompted Ben to open his eyes sluggishly, rubbing at his head and pulling his warm hand back with a grimace. He didn’t notice her until she was stood directly in front of him, her own hand against his forehead as he had done for her. “And you’re burning up.”

It was inevitable really. Ben had felt his throat scratching as he passed the waffles to Leslie and reached into his pocket to grab a tissue as he left the hospital. It didn’t stop the smile that crossed his face at the thought of her, or the joy he’d felt when he got to tell her that they’d reached their target. And it really was their target, because for the first time in a while, Leslie had made Ben feel like he could really be a part of something helpful.

On Monday morning, he was propping his head up with one hand, the other dropping his pen frequently and reaching for the box of tissues he had at arms reach. Chris had taken one look at him and quite literally ran from the room, still shouting about sand breaking his microchip of a body despite the fact his forehead was clear of the sheen of sweat from before and he was back to running 5k three times a day.

“I’m infectious,” he pulled away from her reluctantly and stood up from his desk, ignoring her eye rolling and sighing.

“You caught it from me,” she reasoned frustratedly before holding out her hand, “Now sit down, Ben. I’ll drive you home if you need me to.” Ben shook his head, partially protesting whilst also trying to clear his stuffy head. Leslie had the look in her eyes that suggested ‘no’ wasn’t a word in her vocabulary at that moment in time and she pulled him forcefully by the hand to his desk.

“You have harvest festival meetings all day,” he reminded her, clearing his throat mid-sentence so his voice didn’t cut out. She waved off his concern and placed her folders down on his desk, taking a seat opposite him.

“I’ll cancel,” she promised him with a mischievous smile, “I have three priorities, you know. Friends, waffles and work. The first two are interchangeable but work always comes third.” Ben hid his pleased smile with a cough but couldn’t quite conceal the corner of his mouth turning up slightly.

“We should get going then,” he replied, with very little motivation to complain, “At least you can be back for the afternoon.” 

“And how come you’ve skipped the incoherent, delirious stage?” Leslie asked as she packed his bag for him, disposing of a few empty tissue packets and looking around the table, “Do you have any medicine?”

“I don’t like taking medicine,” Ben muttered under his breath, taking on the same tone as he used with his mum, “And I didn’t skip that stage; what do you think I was doing all weekend?”

“Alone in your motel room? That place is freezing cold, Ben! And you really should have phoned me.”

“Should I?” he asked with raised eyebrows. Her cheeks reddened unusually and she shrugged, murmuring under her breath about priorities again. He punched her lightly on the shoulder and grinned jokingly.

“Shut up,” she frowned, “We’ll talk about this later.”

When Leslie pulled up at the motel, she glanced across to the passenger seat and saw Ben slumped asleep in the seat. She sat back against the headrest with a content smile and watched his fingers lazily intertwine in his sleep, rubbing at the soft fabric of his shirt. Leslie wasn’t often a fan of these moments; sitting around, calm and quiet, wasn’t in the formula for getting anything done but she decided to make an exception, leaning back in her chair and getting comfortable.

The window was cool against Ben’s cheek as he regained consciousness. He groaned under his breath and heard the crack in his voice. His neck ached impatiently, forcing his head to pull itself from the cold surface reluctantly.

“How are you feeling?” Leslie was sat in the driver’s seat, going through notes from a harvest festival binder with unusual relaxedness. Ben frowned through squinting eyes at the sight and pointed between her and the sparsely filled page.

“Why are we in your car?” he asked confusedly, glancing out of the window, “And why are we outside the motel?” Leslie poorly hid a laugh under her breath at his windswept hair as it fell over his eyes, prompting him to swat at it tiredly.

“I thought I’d let you sleep after what you said about the weekend,” she explained kindly, “The delirious stage always stops me from sleeping.”

“Thanks.” He stretched as far as he could in the confines of the car and glanced out of the window at the sky as the blue faded to orange. “What time is it anyway?”

“Six o’clock,” Leslie muttered quickly, “I grabbed some food whilst you were napping. Do you like waffles?”

“I get the impression that there is only one correct answer to that question,” Ben commented drily as Leslie attempted to look nonchalant. He copied her actions as she got out of the car, balancing a couple of polystyrene containers on top of her folder.

“Well, there is a multitude of answers, Benjamin,” she replied with the flash of a grin, “But our friendship ends here if your answer doesn’t begin with a ‘y’ and end with an ‘s.’ So?”

“Yes?” Ben tried with a similar smile as she cautiously jumped up and down in the spot in celebration, almost dropping the waffles in a nearby muddy puddle.

Leslie’s glance only strayed to the box on Ben’s windowsill once and, to her credit, she suppressed her curiosity several times as he used the toilet. She was a little distracted, however, by Ben’s terrible attempts to feel sick secretively. Leslie gave up her oblivious act the fifth time he disappeared to the bathroom and softly pushed on the partially open door, leaning against the frame and watching a mop of brown hair rest against the side of the bath.

“I’m fine,” Ben said suddenly, surprising Leslie from her silent vigil. He tilted his head to look up at her and sat up straight against the tiled wall. “I don’t think I’ll be sick.”

“And you sound very confident of that,” she replied sarcastically, making a mental note to improvise her espionage skills, “Time for bed?” Ben glanced down at his watch for a moment, frowning but then nodding his head.

“Sleeping at 8 o’clock,” he grumbled under his breath as they walked through to the main room. Leslie had subtly plumped up the pillows during one of his visits to the bathroom and folded back the corner of the thin duvet. Ben didn’t protest when she poured him a glass of water although Leslie chalked that up to the fact his eyes were half closed as he never seemed to stop trying to be independent. Curse of a state auditing job, she supposed.

“And I better not see you at that meeting tomorrow morning,” she said in place of wishing him a good night, watching one corner of his mouth quirk upwards in its signature way that send her stomach flipping in an unfamiliar but pleasant way. She smoothed down his unruly hair against the pillow, lingering a moment to run her fingers through the front strands a little. She couldn’t help but realise it was as soft as she’d expected it to be, although quite why she was predicting the condition of her co-worker’s hair, Leslie wasn’t quite sure.

The next morning, a more ordered head of hair greeted Leslie as she walked into the meeting room with a frown ready on her face. Ben still seemed a little out of it and didn’t really speak in greeting, gesturing to his throat with an apologetic smile. He did, however, push a box of waffles in her direction and a cup of coffee as he sipped his own.

“I’ll let you off just this once, Wyatt,” she mumbled under her breath from the seat next to him, barely realising everyone else filing through the door, “But you can’t keep bribing me with waffles.”


	5. Time Capsule

_“You’re leaving soon.”_

The small crowd that had formed around the burial site of the time capsule had dispersed quickly, leaving Leslie to stand on the rapidly built, makeshift stage, facing no one. She couldn’t quite keep the satisfied smile from creeping up on her, her eyes trained on the freshly dug earth in front of her and the small DVD contained within the metal container buried beneath the surface.

She looked up eventually, catching sight of the familiar brown hair of Ben who had moved away from the crowd as they parted ways, standing against a nearby tree and kicking at the dirt and leaves beneath the shadowy boughs. Leslie tilted her head on one side as she took in his slightly hunched figure, hands stuffed in pockets to ward off the autumnal cold, the jacket wrapped loosely around him doing little to fight the stiff breeze.

Ben’s eyes were also watching the freshly dug ground from further away, the temptation to dig up the small disc and take it back for himself overwhelming him. The connection he had suddenly developed with the town full of weirdos had always been there, suppressed by his professional duties and reluctance to form an attachment with anywhere. He couldn’t imagine spending several hours at, what Ron called, a ‘crackpot convention’ in any of the other unwelcoming towns he’d been sent off to, but he just had in Pawnee. And now he was seriously contemplating attending a council led screening of Twilight, willing to brave the evening chill to spend time with the local people, most of whom would never shout in his face or puncture his tires. He was in way too deep.

He felt Leslie’s now familiar concern boring into him from some distance, the sound of crinkling leaves alerting him of her approach, culminating in the slight drop in temperature as her shadow blocked out what little autumn sun he had been bathed in. His eyes left the patch of dirt for a moment to glance up at hers, his head still angled towards the ground.

Leslie buried the thoughts that had come commonplace around Ben; constantly noticing the way the light would just strike one side of his face, or how the wind somehow swept his otherwise messy hair in all the right directions. She would pick up in every expression, no matter how fleeting, and she tried to tell herself it had nothing to do with the fact she found herself watching his face flicker from tired to happy, frustrated to reluctantly amused, in an instant. Although really, there was no other explanation for the observations she made now, noting the brief rise and fall of one corner of his mouth, the way the creases around his mouth lifted in a way those around his eyes couldn’t replicate – not truly happy, but trying to look that way. For her? Who knows (but the voice in Leslie’s head very much wanted to shake him out of it if that was the case.

“How are you doing?” She asked the question casually, or as casual as she could muster, not quite stopping the concern crossing her own face. Unfortunately, Ben had built up his own comprehensive understanding of her expressions and observed the marginally narrowed eyes and tightly pressed lips, her hands interlocking behind her back and immediately correlating them with her displays of ‘friendly worry.’

“Just thinking,” he replied honestly, wishing to avoid the interrogation into the exact nature of his thoughts but not holding out much hope as it was Leslie Knope stood in front of him, not the easily misled Andy, or the otherwise indifferent Ron. And Ben was a little surprised that this didn’t bother him as much as it should have – after all, he didn’t want to undergo the Knope treatment but something, buried into his mind as deeply as the time capsule was in the earth, made his heart skip more optimistically when she was around, in a way that even the literal ray of inextinguishable sun that was Chris couldn’t provoke.

“You do a lot of that,” she replied eventually, her words forming delicately, carefully around her mouth, “Thinking, I mean.” He shrugged with another half-smile, almost apologetic for his own overactive mind and the racing thoughts that almost force themselves out of his tightly closed mouth with their momentum.

“That must be saying something, coming from you,” he teased lightly, listening to her soft chuckle get carried away on the wind with another skip of childish pride. And that was what it was, really; like they were in high school all over again, when every joke and shared smile was a win for the two achingly shy kids who couldn’t and wouldn’t ever bring themselves to admit how they felt. Ben had been that kid a lot, if it wasn’t already obvious, and he’d spent many a summer practically mourning another missed opportunity.

Nowadays the job didn’t provide him with many options. Firstly, there was the impossibility of sustaining a new relationship over constantly changing, long distances. Then there was his new found indifference, a feeling that left his senses dulled and uninterested in the people around him, until they all became numbers and names that he tried to ignore because his job was to get rid of theirs’.

“I’m leaving soon,” he spoke the three ill fated words for the first time numbly, as if his mind had decided to set them free and the weight they carried had sent them cascading from him without a second thought. Leslie nodded confusedly at first, aware that it was a well known fact, before pausing when he didn’t continue.

“That’s what sent you to mope under a tree?” Leslie asked uncertainly, “Now I may be going out on a limb here, but has Mean Ben grown attached to somewhere for once?” Her tone was humorous and joking but there was truth behind her accusation that still scared Ben irrationally and sent his worry factory of a head into overdrive. He likes the town and the people, their quirks, their flaws, their petty arguments. He wants to witness more public forums where the religious connotations of Twilight are debated as profusely as they were that morning, when one time capsule had to turn into countless, meticulously organised collections of the random pieces of junk people had found around their houses. And, truth be told, by the end of those long hours, Ben wasn’t too certain that it was junk, swept up in the less than romanticised, but oddly charming stories of how one threadbare scarf or other had become a priceless family heirloom.

“I don’t know.” Another three words he wasn’t ready to let go of but did anyway. It’s the Leslie Knope effect, he always found himself thinking when it happened.

“Then why don’t you leave whatever it is you’re thinking about under here,” she gestured beneath the sweeping boughs of the tree with a brighter smile, “And then we can grab some popcorn on the way back to the park and start setting up the outdoor cinema.” Her eyes were alive by then, glowing with the fireside warmth of the prospect of organising an event. When it was just picnic blankets and fold out chairs, plastic bowls of popcorn and sugar filled, not quite cold drinks. It was a passion Ben had never been able to match before, not even in his own hometown before he couldn’t set foot in it without being jeered at from across the street. But he was starting to feel a hint of the fire from the distance he put himself at from it all, the inviting prospect of a real home and real friends almost enough to send him running from his averagely paid, secure auditing job. Almost.

He followed her insistent gesturing through the small embankment of trees, passing the freshly turned earth with a small smile as Leslie pointed it out as if it was already one of her favourite tourist attractions. Her voice carried him back to her car and he glanced out of the window contentedly as they passed the houses that were all built from the same bricks and cement but each carried the character of the wacky people who lived there. It was character, Ben decided, that made a place a home. And he’d found a place with just that… and a person to go with it.

He liked her quirks, her flaws, her petty arguments. He liked Leslie Knope, and it was this one observation that sent him further down the spiral than he would have liked because Ben Wyatt, high school nerd, was going to get himself into trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one may be a little rushed and unedited but it was more of a stream of conscience than anything else. I feel like I may be rushing the mutual liking between the two of them, but I want them to get together so much faster than they will :(


	6. Ron and Tammy - Part 2

There was a hint of truth to Leslie’s joking criticism of the calzones she later found herself eating beside Ben but, as she always thought to herself, company makes food a meal and she had excellent company, smiling one of his rare, reaching the eyes smiles. 

Leslie always internally scolded herself for feeling so melancholy in such a moment, unable to fully enjoy a quiet meal with a friend as the thought that such events were finitely numbered or else there would be some factor that stopped them from ever happening again. And she didn’t like to get so existential about the simple action of eating, what was essentially, a folded up pizza but Ben’s earlier acknowledgement that he would soon be moving on, as he did from most places, got her thinking.

“You’re doing a Ben,” her companion commented between mouthfuls, waving his hands in over-accentuated air quotes. He wiped his hands on the nearby napkin and sat back in his chair next to her, glancing out of the window in front of them and leaning forward on the barstool as Leslie found herself cautiously balancing on her own.

“I am?” She shook the distracting thoughts away for the umpteenth time and tried to focus her attention on his undeniably adorable amusement, watching as the corners of his mouth fought a battle with his brain, coming out on top and allowing a grin to light his features.

“Thinking too much,”he recited in a dull voice and rolling his eyes in her direction as she reluctantly joined in with his soft laugh, “What’s wrong?” It always amazed Leslie how fast Ben could swing from well intentioned teasing to that sort of concern you only really expected from a close friend but the frown of concentration replaced the smile and his eyes stopped their periodic survey of the passerby’s beyond the glass and fixed her with an attentive stare.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she began, unable to ignore his raised eyebrows of disbelief, “I’m just thinking about things. And important stuff, you know?” Again, a glimmer of amusement darted across his eyes but he remained relatively serious as he echoed her words.

“Things and stuff?”

“You’re very persistent,” Leslie observed in a hopeful attempt to change the subject. She didn’t want to ruin one of their last (potentially) meals together, nor did she want to provoke another one of Ben’s low moods, noticing that he was more than capable of sending himself into a spiral of uncertainty. And, honestly, she didn’t want to admit she was falling for a man she had labelled mean, someone who had arrived in the safe bubble of her town not just with a needle to burst it but rather a machete to hack it to pieces. And, in the spirit of having some internal epiphanies, Leslie realised with a frown that she had met her equal in Ben, something that she was not used to what with her recent dating history consisting almost solely of a seriously undereducated, if not well intentioned cop.

“And now you’re frowning,” Ben continued his commentary as he pushed his almost finished calzone across the plate in front of him, eyes now fully concentrated on the ever changing contours of Leslie’s face.

“Alright,” she sucked in the slightly stale air of the restaurant and suppressed a need to shrug her shoulders noncommittally and laugh it off because Leslie wasn’t one to back down from addressing a concern, “It’s just, spending time with you-” She broke off in a fit of uncertainty and left the sentence hanging in the suffocating warmth between them.

“Clearly makes you unhappy,” Ben finished for her, the undertone of humour still there but a look of hurt reaching his eyes far more easily. Leslie held her hands up suddenly and babbled an apology, glancing in his direction to gauge his reaction.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she assured him halfheartedly, “It just reminds me that you’re leaving one day and this won’t happen anymore. You may not develop an attachment to anywhere or anything but in my home town, I do. You’re my friend and soon you’ll have a new city to get used to and a new Parks department with another Leslie and a Ron and a Tom. Hell, you’ll probably find an underachieving intern rather you’re there called April and she’ll get on your nerves as much as the one here does.” She broke off with another frown, closing her eyes and taking a breath. Ben was still pushing the pizza crust around his plate absentmindedly when she opened them, his eyes away from hers and returning to their scavenger hunt around the view from the window.

“I like Pawnee,” he replied simply, his voice far softer than it had been and possessing that same vulnerable, trusting quality she was more accustomed to hearing in their late night confessions to each other.

“But-”

“You don’t understand,” he interrupted gently, “I like it here in a way that I’ve never liked any of the other places. They’ve consisted of the same damp motels, barely salvageable budgets and Chris but it’s different here. The people are different here.”

“You’re still leaving,” Leslie accused weakly, her heart not in the argument she was setting up and the darkening clouds in the sky only serving as another reason to avoid confrontation and make a dash for her car.

“And in the mean time I’m here,” Ben diffused the tension easily, his insistence reinforced in the stare he held her eyes in for a moment, “I’m here and we’re eating calzones. Tomorrow we can get waffles and plan the harvest festival. At the weekend you’ll probably have some clean up scheme running in one of the parks and I’ll be there. If it was anywhere else I’d be locked in my room, relieved to find a single second where I could be by myself with a good book or a film.”

Leslie nodded, satisfied for the moment and still concerned about the stormy grey the sky had turned, glancing up at the clouds with disdain. Ben noticed her actions and left enough money for the two of them tucked under one plate and standing up.

“Come on,” he said, squeezing her shoulder softly, “We don’t want to get caught in the rain.”

Outside, the temperature was no lower than it was in the restaurant, an unusual heaviness settling on the autumn air. Ben soon shrugged off his jacket and placed it under one arm, leading Leslie across the road and into the neighbouring park. It was fairly small, more of a public garden, with borders of seasonal flowers lining the stone wall. The pansies that took up the space for the moment illuminated the grass with splashes of white and blue, intermingled with occasional dots of orange and yellow. The corner of Leslie’s mouth turned up slightly as they set off down the path, wondering when he had discovered the shortcut to the nearby parking spot.

“Is this one of yours?” Ben asked to fill the silence, gesturing towards the border of flowers to one side of them. He inhaled the slightly cooling air contentedly and relaxed his arm as Leslie’s slid into his.

“Summer project a few years ago,” she replied predictably, “We only had a small budget but the local primary school looks after the replanting every season. I wanted a bench or something so people would actually stop in here but that hasn’t happened just yet.”

“I’m sure it will one day,” Ben said with a small smirk, “Not many of your plans fall short.” Leslie nodded in agreement, pointing out the spot she had chosen for said bench with her usual determination and chattering happily about a similar plot of land she was hoping to acquire one day to turn into another walled garden. 

She didn’t see Ben’s growing smile or his indifference as they stopped to admire a particularly straight run of flowers as the rain began to fall in puddles along the gravel path. She didn’t see the quiet desperation in his eyes, concealed almost entirely with wavering dismissal and rational thinking. Most of all, she didn’t notice their hands slide comfortably together as they began to walk again but the feeling of his fingers interlocking perfectly with her own made her feel more comfortable than she had for a long time.

And amongst the stories of parks, past and future, she found herself present with Ben, in the moment; not once thinking that it may be the last time they spent an evening together.


End file.
